Malory and His European Contemporaries Arthurian Studies

The late-medieval adaptations and compilations of the Arthurian story are a European phenomenon that has sparked both mystification and controversy. Often dismissed as nostalgic recreations that attempt to halt the literary tide, these ambitious projects saw adaptors from across Western Europe combining a vast array of prose and verse sources from different languages into encyclopedic narrative chronologies of King Arthur and his court. Ranging from ornate verse adaptations to heavily condensed prose works, the resulting texts reflect a process of translating, cutting, and arranging Arthurian material into new literaty incarnations, which nonetheless retain recognisable versions of the Arthurian story. This study re-evaluations Malory's 'Morte Darthur' and four broadly contemporary European romance collections.